51m0n

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1357661890' post='1926244'] there's a post somewhere with a massive description on how to set up a (proper) compressor properly. Think of anything with one or two knobs as a cut down version that only lets you change some perimeters- then try and understand how each one works. Otherwise you'll just get a list of folk saying "i like this pedal" etc As a direct response- the ashdown amp compression is a very woolly beefy up type thing. Not all will be like that. It depends why you want compression? [/quote] That will be one of mine I think.....

box.com or dropbox.com

There are a ton of reasons why a compressor on an amp may not work for you, its parameters will be heavily preordained and its unlikely that they will do what you want, the coimpressor circuit will be something of an afterthought as well and so probably wont be very good. Have a read of the recording blog on compression:- http://blog.basschat.co.uk/setting-up-a-compressor/ It will hopefully give you some more useful info about the difference between comporessors and limiters and how to set up a compressor. Any preamp with a tube in it may add some subtle compression, but that is nto the same in terms of control and flexibility as a proper compressor. Honestly compression isnt as hard to understand and implement as it seems, but there is a lot of conflicting info out there....

People still reference with auratones (Behringer make a cheap version of the auratone even!) They allow you to concentrate on the mids on a small box with no port and pretty even though limited requency response. Often people will mix on a single auratone in mono, to get levels, check how transients are reacting together, ensure there is enough space in the mids for vocals etc. Of course then you have to recheck everythig on the bigger monitors to get any idea of what is going on in the bass, and get soem panning sorted in the mix, theoretically when you get as far as the panning suddenly everything has its own space and the whole mix sounds really defined with a space for everything and everything in its place. NS10s on the other hand, they just plain suck

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1357651278' post='1925964'] I gave up listening to music years ago; I only listen to test tones nowadays as at least they're properly recorded! [/quote] I dont even listen, I have an oscilloscope I can watch, its far warmer...

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1357647916' post='1925858'] I don't think that music has become as devalued as you think. It simply doesn't occupy as dominant a position in western society's popular culture as it used to. IME there are still people interested in music, but among the younger generation it's now just one of many things to be into. When I was at school in the 70s, everyone except for one or two weirdos were into pop and rock. That's not the case anymore, but this who are into things other than music are equally passionate about them. [/quote] I'm not sure but I think you've just contradicted yourself in one paragraph. Rock/pop used to be a/the dominant media for youth popular cultrure, and now it isnt, it is therefore of less value within popular culture, surely. Ergo it is devalued. I think you are saying what I am, but maybe you see different reasons for that maybe being the case - in truth its probably all of those reasons to a greater or lesser degree I would think. These things have a habit of being far more complex than any of us take into account I have no idea ctually if In the 70's the amount that people spent on music per head out of there earnings was a greater or lesser amount than they do now. But I do think there is greater expectation now to be able to get music for nothing, or next to nothing, whereas before that wasnt the case. Again I am not sure if its going to end up being a positive thing for artists or not, we will have to wait and see, the thing is Pandoras Box has been opened, there is no way back no (even if you wanted to, which you may not).

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1357647142' post='1925828'] Listen to a Nakamichi Dragon! [/quote] Which retailed for how much? JEEZ! I just checked ebay, nearly £700 for a second hand one today. I mean, really?? What state would the heads be in if its this old?? [quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1357647142' post='1925828'] Pro Walkman was an excellent piece of kit; record and playback were almost as good as the Nakamichi! [/quote] If you had the headphones to hear it it was better than average, which kind of made it rather less of a Walkman didnt it? But come on, I've listened to a ton of tape, on a lot of different tape decks of all sorts of quality levels, and hiss was always always an issue. If not hte hiss then the artifacts from the noise reduction, or wow and flutter from the transport, or the tape print through, or the damn things chewing themselves to shreds for absolutely no explicable reason at all. Cripes we had 1" 16 track and that had noise reduction systems along side it which had all the same issues, cassette had no chance compoared to that.... [quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1357647142' post='1925828'] I heard excellent sounds from DCC once - though to be fair it was using an Ongaku On amp and Tannoy Westminster Royale speakers, around £60k worth! [/quote] We had a DCC in the studio for years, it had a far simpler and therefore more reliable transport than DAT ever did, it sounded excellent. It even played analogue tape too. Eventually we couldnt get the tapes anymore for it, it went the way of the Dodo, following Betamax as a better solution to a problem that was just not taken up because (in its case) it was a year or so too late. Crying shame, I really liked DCC! Yes it woudl chew a tape up about as often as normal quality tape machines did, but DAT used to do one every couple of weeks! [quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1357647142' post='1925828'] It's a throwaway, want it now with no effort on my part world! [/quote] True...

Heh maybe BRX, maybe. But look at it this way, compact cassette was the mp3 of its day, and that was terrible, it had apalling hiss that no amount of Dolby or any other noise reduction system really dealt with without drasticaly removing the top end. Everyone knew its limitations because most houses had at least one of those cheesy midi systems which had a pair of typical large book shelf speakers with a tweeter a mid/bass driver and a port. That was the standard. Some people had a step up from this with real seprerates. This still wasnt audiophile in any sense of the word, it was just liking music a bit more than average. Then there were the audiophiles pending real money on kit. Vinyl usually suffered from terrible noise too (whether from misuse or poor pressing), and everyone knew this because the amp and speakers were capable of reproducing the artifacts from the rumble and hiss, and pops and crackles and clicks that were standard fair for most households enjoying vinyl. Hell on my dads hifi (B&O were hifi in the 70s, they seem to be a design statement/lifestyle choice now) you could clearly hear the cross talk between the channels on a lot of 70's pop (Abba, I'm looking at you, and Boney M's Night Flight To Venus come to think of it), it was never as apparent on the classical he loved because of the recording methodology (DECCA trees and stereo pairs give no real issues with crosstalk artifacts). Then along comes CD, there is no transport noise at all, no crosstalk at all, wider dynamic range, as good a frequency response as those speakers could ever cope with. Hi fidelity indeed. And instant track selection (best of all worlds - dayummm!) Along comes the SOny Walkman (the original was pretty huge) making music listening 'portable' - at the expense of quality - those orange foam headphones were sh**. Then we get minidisc which was awful, and Philips digital tape (can I hear you say Betamax) and DAT (which was never marketed as a consumer product anyway), and finally with the advent of the internet we get mp3 which is the first technology that sounded worse on an average stereo than what came before (with the possible exception of the walkmna version of compact cassette, but cassette was so bad it didnt really make so much difference). MP3 makes portability a reality though, so people start to only listen to music when they are doing something else (travelling) and it progresses into a background medium, or foreground only when people are mashed and its so loud through a ratty PA that fidelity is utterly compromised. What I find laughable now though is the fear of piracy that mp3 engendered in the music bizz. I mean it sounds as bad as cassette copy, remember we are talking 128kbps at best when the issue really was blown sky high with Napster - people were still on dialup for goodness sake, it took 10 minutes to download a single track that sounded gash! HiFi is now no more the goal, listening to music is no longer an end in and of itself, people dont sit down to listen to music, they put music on and chat over it, whilst making the dinner (guilty as the next man). Music is now so utterly devalued that people whilst happy to pay for coffee in starbucks fret at spending the cost of a couple of coffees on an album. Its not the music thats done this, its the tech IMO....

My brother-in-law is a book buyer for the regions libraries. Maybe I should let him know about this one Bilbo?

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1357639390' post='1925629'] Quality of sound has never really been very important. I used to have an AM radio with tiny 5" speakers in my car, at one point I upgraded to an FM with cassette. It wasn't digital and would still go in and out of tune. But it did the job. Now the minimum is a PLL FM tuner with CD player and decent quality speakers. [/quote] Yes, and here in lies the issue. Up until recently as time went on and techology changed the result was an improvement in fidelity with each step. Until mp3, where things took a gigantic leap backward. And that is a steaming pile that is just about reaching the olfactory systems of all those who have been jumping into the mire that is downloaded music since the dawn of the interent.... [quote name='TimR' timestamp='1357639390' post='1925629'] I'm sure music is made louder to sound better in the car or headphones on the tube. [/quote] Yes it is. More correctly the average RMS level is raised compared to the peak level, this means the music is always the same volume regardless of the musicality of the original playing, so you can always hear it in a noisy environment once you set the volume at the beginning of the album. [quote name='TimR' timestamp='1357639390' post='1925629'] How many people who aren't audiophiles sit and listen to huge speaker systems in their home? Not many. As this thread shows the wives have control of what the sitting room looks like and big speakers don't look good. [/quote] Interesting point, my wife wasnt initially impressed by the size of our floorstanders, then she heard them, now she wouldnt go back for all the tea in China - yes they are big, and not exactly works of art visually, but the sound is great, and they project right through to the kitchen with ease so she can listen to Gonzalo Martinez And His Thinking Congas (hugely recommended album if you can get a copy by the way) even when she bakes the family seriously superb cakes. She always has loved music though....

[quote name='lettsguitars' timestamp='1357639733' post='1925642'] NOOOOO. Just that most folk are only interested in modern rock and pop (dubstep, whatever) [b]which to me is throwaway music[/b] and has all been leading up to this point of audio saturation and quantity not quality due to industry profit margins. [/quote] That could well be an indication of your taste rather than the quality of the work involved though, couldn't it? I'm not going to attempt to defend the worst attrocities of contemporary pop, but I do think that a lot of contemporary EDM has interesting links to some pretty experimental electronica that validate it as an art form as much as any jazz by the likes of Coltrane (just as an example). No its not all about notes and harmony, instead its all about timbres, saturation, filters, sounds, transients, grooves etc, yet it is still as often as not experimental in that it is constantly evolving and striving for the next new idea, which is exacly what jazz was supposed to be doing, and then sort of stopped doing... Of course I wouldnt expect everyone to enjoy it, any more than I can enjoy the efforts of Coltrane, but that makes it no less valid...

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1357639493' post='1925635'] It's not that really mate [I don't think] I think it's that people [b]may[/b] take time out to listen to all the tracks, but then to down load larger files is even more time. If it's just the folk in the mix comp you expecting to vote, fair enough - But people not in the comp might find it tedious, and not bother. Just look at the Composing comp, some people are admitting that they just skip through, and that's just through streaming. I can hear through the Soundcloud [converted] files which ones stand out to my ears - I am not sure unconverted files will make that amount of a difference. I thought the art was to make things translate. Just my take and no offence meant, others will vary of course. Good luck to you guys. [/quote] To be honest I didnt think anyone would even notice what we were doing tucked away in the Recording forum. Its not unusual to sit here all on my own for a day watching tumbleweed go by, its only when I venture outside its comforting embrace into the lands of General Discussion and Off Topic that I get myself in trouble

Its a command line tool that originated in the Gnu Linux world. Its really not all that difficult to use, has versions for all platforms is free, and has a fairly complex set of possibilities. You will want to read the manual and get to the examples for up/down sampling Where it absolutely excels is file conversions, and being command line if you know your beans on your platform its easy to script it to do lots of files. It can do other stuff like normalisation and so on too.

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1357636488' post='1925574'] I think it's a little unrealistic to expect people to download the tracks to listen (it's optimistic enough to expect many to listen to different variations of the same track several times) [/quote] Really? Why? Is it so hard to click download and playback the file locally then? This makes me sad, people have put in a lot of time and effort into these, if only for their own enjoyment and to learn from each other. The truth is though, the comparison is of the mixes, and at Soundcloud streaming rates you are hearing a pretty poor version of their efforts, whereas at full quality you will be hearing what they rendered (albeit through a different system). I know good mixes should translate, but they tend to translate best when not hamstrung by low fidelity playback....

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1357635136' post='1925546'] Aye! I played the Kraftwerk "Minimum Maximum" live DVD to a youth t'other day. Previously he'd been going on about the ultimate sound quality of his Beats 'phones/iPod and the "awesome bass" of his Logitech 5.1 computer audio system. He's now going to go and buy a proper stereo like this one! [/quote] Ding, and in fact Dong.... Would that be the room that accidentally has no parallel walls in by any chance I've had similar experiences with my far more meagre hifi in my front room, from professional musicians no less. You would think they were used to decent sound reproduction spending time in studios and earningtheir living from music, but they are so often on the other side of the glass that they often dont really get to hear the results of their labours at best either these days I think. A copl ehave started researching decent second hand hifi having listened to their work on my hifi. One is a double bassist, the look on his face when he heard the bottom fundamental octave coming out of my speakers was priceless...

Not necessarily, its a complex thing, but you certainly aren't getting what you would from something tracked at 96. Furthermore you arent giving the fx the extra fidelity (without their own upsampling) that upsampling everything to 96 outside of the DAW with sox would give either. Depends on what did the sample conversion to a very great deal. Not all DAWs are equal in this regard, one of the best tools is sox, and another is the Voxengo tool for up/down sampling - both free. Cant remember the site with all the numbers to prove this though, do a google search for it!

Its a perfectly good idea to listen to albums through studio monitors. For one thing it will help you learn the monitors, for another some of the finest monitors used in studios and mastering suites around the world today are better known as top of the range hifi (B&W 800 series in Abbey Road for instance)

Love the track Nigel, saw this on Facebook too, lovely stuff from Kit again, well done!

96 would roughly half the processing I have available, and I couldnt live with that I typically mix at 48KHz 24bit and havent had the sheer grunt to go higher with realistic track densities yet. I would want at least twice the horsepower available before I would consider going there...

Sounds ace, want to hear it for real now though

[quote name='redstriper' timestamp='1357585005' post='1924930'] There are some great ideas in all the mixes and the range of approaches is amazing. Can I suggest everyone allows downloads on their mix, so they can be listened to anywhere without streaming on line. Should my original mix be included in the competition? Steve. [/quote] Yes, definitely!

I think this is pretty important, people, we should all be downloading the files to do a proper comparison - well as proper as we can - without the inherent mangling of soundcloud's streaming. If you cant be bothered that doesnt matter really, but in the interest of really trying to hear whats there it should be worth while... 192KHz, crikey, I'd need a more substantial machine for mixing to go up that high!

[quote name='ZenBasses' timestamp='1357582553' post='1924861'] .... I don't really get the argument for cds being cold..?.. It's more to do with the advancements of microphones. Old style mics picked up much more 'background noise' made up of reflections off walls, people, instruments etc etc.. This gives a better sense of actually being 'in the room'? .... [/quote] Errr, not sure about that. Most serious studios are more than proud to have several Neumann U47s (FET and tube), U67s and U87s, not to mention Telefunken and Coles, RCA and all manner of other interesting vintage oddities alongside the likes of many far more modern but equally superb mics such as those made by Nordic Audio Labs at the highest end and AKG, Audio Technica, Sennheiser and Shure and whoever else you care to name lower down that list. Mics then didn't "capture more of the room" than they do now, that is entirely dependent on mic pickup pattern, and they are all available now as they were then. Ribbon mics may be the technology you are referring to as they are typically figure of 8 pattern and will therefore pickup a lot of room. Ribbons were in use before anything else I think, but dynamics and condensors go back a very very long way indeed, the first electret condensor was invented in 1916 at Bell labs IIRC. It may surprise you to know that there has been a huge resurgence in ribbon mic usage over the last ten or 15 years since cheaper Chinese models with excellent characteristics have flooded into the market. Although they have never been truly out of fashion, Bruce Swedien made extensive use of ribbons (B&O ribbons I think, although he says he has moved on to Royers these days) when he layed the tracks down for Michael Jackson's Thriller album - for instance. Ribbons have a corrugated aluminium foil 'membrane' and so have more mass than more modern mic designs, and therefore respond more slowly to changes in air pressure (sound) meaning they tend towards being somewhat darker, and some might say apply a mechanical limiting to transients. They sound fantastic in the right place. And that is the same now as it ever was, the best mic for a given application is the one that sounds best in that application at that time, it has nothing to do with the era in which it was designed or the type of mic or anything else. All that matters is does it sound better than the rest of your options in that particular scenario....

[quote name='flyfisher' timestamp='1357577372' post='1924761'] This is the really ironic thing. My understanding is that vinyl has a dynamic range of about 55-65dB (it varies because of the varying effective speed of the groove under the stylus as it moves across the record) whereas CDs have a dynamic range of well over 90db - a huge improvement. Meanwhile, modern production is all about audio compression that wrings the dynamics out of recordings! (OK, there are exceptions of course, but the trend is fairly clear). Funny old world. [/quote] I couldnt agree more! Although I think that in fairness a lot of mixing isnt done for volume per se, its done for the best and most emotive production of the song for themselves that the mix engineer is capable of producing from the raw tracks. I mean a lot of heavy rock was all about trying to be louder than everyone else, and the Motown mastering engineers were very upset by the volume o fthe White album by some upstarts from the UK. It tends to be not even the mastering engineer really, its the person paying them that states "Make this the loudest thing ever" or "It must be as loud as <[i]insert any rancid pop artists name you hate here[/i]>'s last single or we wont use you again" So who's fault is it exactly? And it isnt going away, far from it! The Loudness War is still going, the accepted level of a CD has not dropped, the average level is still unbelievably high compared to the peak level in all contemporary pop, EDM, rock, you name it, if it isnt old school (jazz or classical) then its being pumped up during mastering.

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1357576665' post='1924754'] The lack of dynamic range, the music being loud and blaring as opposed to being natural and dynamic. [/quote] Yeah thats mainly mastering for volume, although in truth there are particular methodologies that can be used when mixing to maximise the mastering engineers chances of getting that last 1 or 2dB of RMS level. In itself its nothing to do with mp3 data compression, [i]except[/i] that tracks mastered for absolute maximum volume tend to produce more artifacts as a result of a subsequent mp3 conversion. Appraently (I've never actually attempted to verify this myself)